GeForce 9600 GT 1GB vs Radeon R9 380 2G

Intro

Compare that to the Radeon R9 380 2G, which comes with a core clock frequency of 970 MHz and a GDDR5 memory speed of 1425 MHz. It also features a 256-bit bus, and uses a 28 nm design. It is made up of 1792 SPUs, 112 Texture Address Units, and 32 Raster Operation Units.

Display Graphs

Hide Graphs

Power Usage and Theoretical Benchmarks

Power Consumption (Max TDP)

GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		95 Watts
Radeon R9 380 2G		190 Watts
	Difference: 95 Watts (100%)

Memory Bandwidth

Theoretically speaking, the Radeon R9 380 2G should be a lot faster than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB overall. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		182400 MB/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		57600 MB/sec
	Difference: 124800 (217%)

Texel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G should be quite a bit (about 422%) faster with regards to AF than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		108640 Mtexels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		20800 Mtexels/sec
	Difference: 87840 (422%)

Pixel Rate

The Radeon R9 380 2G is much (approximately 198%) faster with regards to anti-aliasing than the GeForce 9600 GT 1GB, and capable of handling higher resolutions better. (explain)

Radeon R9 380 2G		31040 Mpixels/sec
GeForce 9600 GT 1GB		10400 Mpixels/sec
	Difference: 20640 (198%)

Please note that the above 'benchmarks' are all just theoretical - the results were calculated based on the card's specifications, and real-world performance may (and probably will) vary at least a bit.

Price Comparison

Specifications

Memory Bandwidth: Bandwidth is the largest amount of data (counted in megabytes per second) that can be transported over the external memory interface in a second. The number is worked out by multiplying the card's bus width by the speed of its memory. In the case of DDR RAM, it should be multiplied by 2 once again. If it uses DDR5, multiply by ANOTHER 2x. The higher the card's memory bandwidth, the better the card will be in general. It especially helps with anti-aliasing, High Dynamic Range and higher screen resolutions.

Texel Rate: Texel rate is the maximum number of texture map elements (texels) that are applied in one second. This number is calculated by multiplying the total number of texture units of the card by the core speed of the chip. The higher this number, the better the video card will be at handling texture filtering (anisotropic filtering - AF). It is measured in millions of texels applied in a second.

Pixel Rate: Pixel rate is the most pixels the video card can possibly write to the local memory in a second - measured in millions of pixels per second. Pixel rate is calculated by multiplying the number of Render Output Units by the the card's clock speed. ROPs (Raster Operations Pipelines - also sometimes called Render Output Units) are responsible for drawing the pixels (image) on the screen. The actual pixel output rate also depends on many other factors, most notably the memory bandwidth - the lower the bandwidth is, the lower the potential to get to the maximum fill rate.